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Based on what? That's the trouble with discussion about the child support issue sometimes. It became popular to diss fathers as a group. Just the facts man. I checked into it.

Based on your number. You say it's 1/2 of 1%. OK we know that the divorce rate in this country is around 50% which equates to a couple million divorces in this country every year, even if only half of them involve child support of some kind you're still getting a situation where you're getting at least 5000 new deadbeat dads every year (that's based on 2 million total divorces per year which is surely a small number). Assuming all of them only owe as much as my father did ($125/ month) that $625,000 per month and $7.5 million per year. That ain't chump change and it's all based on number probably much smaller than reality.

Sometimes it's hard to explain something simple in a clear way, but I know that the problem is more than a decade of propaganda piled up to make people believe things that aren't true. If you're looking for something that makes sense in - how should I say it -- a normal way, you're not going to get it. Here's the most basic thing you should focus on completely until you're sure you've got it. If you get this, then we'll have some chance of moving on. Profits are made in proportion to "collections." ALL PAYMENTS are counted as "collections." Make sure you understand that last part: ALL PAYMENTS. It doesn't matter if they're late or on time. It doesn't matterif there was ever a payment problem or not; literally ALL PAYMENTS are counted as "collections."

You're still evading the question. How are these laws being sicked on people that they shouldn't be? It's a very simple direct question. You say people with good payment history are getting busted, all I want to know is how. What's the loophole that greedy ex-wives/government officials/whoever the hell else are using to attack men that these laws were not supposed to attack. The last I heard when everything was going normally all child support payments were going from spouse to spouse no government agency involved. Did that change? If not then how are ex-wives sicking the government on men that pare paying on time? It's a simple question give me a simple answer, even an annectotal one, I realize those aren't scientific proof but I want an example. Just because it's profitable does not prove that the system is being abused, it proves that it can be but there are a lot of possible things in this world that aren't happening.

... your final comments are simply rude and not repeated in this post ...

Asking you to propose a solution to this problem you insist exists but refuse to provide any proof of is rude?! I'm no graduate of Ms Manners but that doesn't strike me as rude.

I understood your point about getting a big number the first time. What you said was that you believe my number is low. What basis do you have for that?

OK, your second paragraph cleared something up for me. Things have changed dramatically. Child support -- all of it -- is now regulated under welfare law: All of it. Not just what we used to call "welfare cases," all cases. In every case in which child support is awarded (all cases involving children regardless of income etc), a rigid formula, politically determined by the state, under federal regulation is used to determine the amount to be awarded; and then the system owns you thereafter.

(I've heard of people who don't pay through the system, but they typically haven't been to court for a long time to get their order changed.)

The formulae used in the states set award levels arbitrarily high and give only a small token reduction if any at all for visitation time or even in cases of joint custody where parents have nearly equal time with their children. In the mid-1990s, a federal law was passed disallowing reductions in child support due to reduced income and in many cases unemployment. Ex-husbands cannot get clear of child support after DNA tests prove children aren't theirs, and neither have a growing number of men who've not been married to the mother and have proven through DNA tests that they aren't the fathers. They're even collecting child support from children who've been raped by older women producing a child. There are cases in which fathers have been wrongfully convicted of something, eventually prove it and get out of jail, but are faced with huge child support arrearages that they can't get adjusted, and even a guy who spent years as a prisoner of war and came home to face the same problem. They jail poor men who don't have money for indefinite periods hoping someone will show up one day and pay, and even harass men on death row.

The federal funding scheme rewarded states based on the amount they "collect," and allowed all money paid through the system to be classified as "collection." Therefore, the states favored arbitrarily high award levels and making it impossible to get reductions even for good reason. They also preferred to enroll good payors in the system to maximize (so-called) "collections."

If you read the following article, and the Court decision in Georgia, you might have a much better idea what I'm talking about. The judge in the case does raise the issue of design to increase funding in his decision to declare the Georgia guidelines unconstitutional. It's about time. These guidelines have been applied for more than a decade now, and this is the first time one has been declared unconstitutional - but this judge did do a good job of it. It's only a Superior Court judge however, and this case will be in the Georgia Supreme Court before the year is out. A small number of other practices have been declared unconstitutional in some states, but people making money from the system, well connected politically, stepped in to "minimize the damage."

Article on the Georgia case WITH A LINK TO THE COURT'S DECISION